ROME : After record-breaking afternoon for France against Italy in Rome on Sunday, focus quickly shifted to their next Six Nations meeting against Ireland with captain Antoine Dupont describing it as a potential tournament decider.
France will travel to Dublin take on the unbeaten Irish in their next clash on March 8, having taken a bonus point victory in Rome with a massive 73-24 victory over the Italians, the biggest score for France in the Six Nations.
“When we looked at the fixtures when they came out, we suspected that the game against Ireland would be an crucial match of the competition,” Dupont told a press conference after the runaway win at the Stadio Olimpico.
“We had little doubt that Ireland would rack up the victories and the match will be super important. We could be in a better situation, but we are still in competition. We will have to play our best possible match.”
France trail Ireland by three points in the standings, having beaten Wales 43-0 in their opening game, and Italy on Sunday, but losing to England by a point a fortnight ago.
“When there are poor performances like that, there are two ways to react,” Dupont said of the Twickenham defeat.
“Either you lower your head or you fight back. We got back to work, we focused on the intensity and the state of mind that we wanted to be in. We talked about it a lot during the week, especially about the start of game, which was good, even if we didn’t score straight away. We were rigorous and it paid off.”
Italy were first to score a try in Sunday’s clash but France bounced back with vengeance to score 11 of their own, two of them for man-of-the-match Dupont.
“The whole team had a lot of fun, we played great rugby. We were solid on the fundamentals first, with a good state of mind,” the skipper added.
“The difference today is that we caught the ball. We were unable to explain all those handling errors in England.”
Sunday’s clash saw 14 tries in total for a new Six Nations record. France’s 11 tries easily beat their previous best of seven in a Six Nations clash.
(Writing by Mark Gleeson in Cape Town; editing by Pritha Sarkar)
